Jubilee

ARTICLES ABOUT JUBILEE BY DATE - PAGE 5

Lyric Opera has bounced back from last year's $1.1 million deficit and is heading into its 50th anniversary season this fall with a surplus of roughly $700,000. Lyric sold more than 98 percent of its seats for the 83 performances it presented during 2003-04, yielding $26.3 million in revenues, according to the financial report for fiscal year 2004 that was due to be announced at the company's annual meeting Monday. General director William Mason credits the substitution of "Faust" and "Pirates of Penzance" for helping to increase ticket sales and cut down on production costs.

Illinois' players whooped, hollered and chest-bumped on the Assembly Hall floor Wednesday. They joined the crowd of 16,248 in celebrating freshman Brian Randle's high-flying dunk over two defenders and senior reserve Jerrance Howard's three-pointers. Illinois, on the heels of losing its Top 25 ranking, which broke a streak of 68 straight appearances in a national poll, got its swagger back Wednesday night. The Illini (12-4, 3-2) crushed upstart Penn State 80-37 for the team's largest margin of victory in Big Ten play since 1956, when Illinois beat Ohio State by 47 points.

It is the Vatican's 11th Commandment: Speak not of the pope's death until he actually is dead. So when Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn, the aristocratic archbishop of Vienna and a man often mentioned as a possible papal successor, recently spoke of Pope John Paul II "approaching his last days and months," it sounded like the start of the official Vatican death watch. With most of the church's 166 cardinals in Rome for the pope's silver jubilee, the beatification of Mother Teresa on Sunday and a consistory that will create 30 new cardinals, the Roman Catholic leaders are seeing for themselves the fading shadow of the once-vigorous man who became pope 25 years ago. Although succession rarely is discussed publicly in Vatican precincts, it hangs in the air like incense in an old Roman church.

The European architects who built this sumptuous city at the behest of Peter the Great dubbed it Russia's Babylon of the Snows, and Russia has every intention of marking its second city's 300th birthday with Babylonian flair. St. Petersburg is an engineering marvel, built on a swath of vast marshland where the Neva River opens into the Gulf of Finland, adorned with sprawling palaces that Russians insist outdo what Louis XIV did at Versailles. On the same northern latitude as Anchorage and the southern tip of Greenland, the city bides its time through frozen grayness from December to March, then revels in summer's famed White Nights that hang scrims of endless indigo or goldenrod twilight behind a skyline of onion-domed cupolas and spires.

Given the vast universe of characters in Marvel Comic's X-Men series, it's not surprising that more than a few have been overlooked in the comics-to-film translation. Iceman and Pyro had cameos in 2000's "X-Men" film, and actor Shawn Ashmore will return in "X2: X-Men United" to expand his Iceman role, while "Tadpole's" Aaron Stanford was recast as Pyro. A few more characters won cameos in "X2"--and even if the movie doesn't have the space to flesh out these mutant superheroes, we do: 1. COLOSSUS (Piotr Nikolaievitch Rasputin)

A torrent of front-page revelations, accusations and countercharges about the royal household is challenging the monarchy's hold on the nation's regard just months after it was revalidated by the celebration of Queen Elizabeth II's 50 years on the throne. The jubilee festivities in June, with millions of Britons thronged outside Buckingham Palace lustily cheering their sovereign and her family, were a hearty emblem of the Windsors' recovery from the dark days after the death in 1997 of Princess Diana.

Perhaps the local events lacked the uproar of London--the tumultuous rock show, the fireworks display, the inadvertent setting on fire of Buckingham Palace--but Chicago's anglophiles have been on a roll of their own this week. It's been busy, busy, busy as they celebrate the Golden Jubilee of the reign of Britain's Queen Elizabeth II. On Monday, Her Majesty's Consul General Robert Culshaw greeted a full-house crowd gathered in her honor at the Chicago Shakespeare Theater. "Friends, Chicagoans, countrymen, lend me your ears," he urged, whipping the audience into the spirit of a theatrical evening.

Britain's Queen Elizabeth II threw open the gardens of Buckingham Palace for the first time on Saturday to host a star-studded classical concert launching four days of celebrations of her 50th year on the throne. Some 12,000 flag-waving Britons, who won tickets in a lottery, streamed onto the lawns of the queen's London residence for "Prom at the Palace," starting the Golden Jubilee festivities for the 76-year-old monarch. After enjoying the likes of New Zealand opera singer Kiri Te Kanawa and Russian cellist Mstislav Rostropovich, they joined in with patriotic crowd-pleasers like "Land of Hope and Glory" and the national anthem "God Save the Queen."

Fifty years after Queen Elizabeth II became Britain's monarch, her majesty's subjects no longer seem to love her the way they once did. A public opinion poll released Monday showed that although a large majority of Britons surveyed still support the idea of a monarchy, most think the 75-year-old queen is out of touch with ordinary people and no longer "symbolizes the nation as a whole." Given all the scandals that have rocked the royal family, it may not be surprising that only 27 percent think she has been a good mother.

Fifty years ago next month she was a slight young woman of just 25, sitting on a platform nestled amid the branches of a fig tree in Kenya watching wildlife feed, when her life and that of her country changed forever. Elizabeth Windsor learned of the sudden death of her father, King George VI, from her husband, Philip, who got the news from a member of the royal party who had received a call from London. When Philip asked her what she would call herself as queen, she is reported to have replied: "My own name of course, what else?"